MOSCOW — A panel of respected figures from Russia’s art world issued an emotional appeal to President Vladimir V. Putin on Thursday to make an exception to a recent ban on adoptions by Americans, and allow children to join American parents they have already come to know.
Chulpan Khamatova, revered here for her charity work as well as her acting, spoke in front of a screen showing blown-up photographs of families whose adoptions have been halted. Beside her sat Beth Hettinger of Westfield, N.J., who flew to Russia to bring back Aleksei, who is 18 months old. Ms. Hettinger was scheduled to leave Russia without Aleksei on Friday.
“A child, even if he is very small, is already waiting for his mama to come and get him, and she does not come,” Ms. Khamatova said. “When he grows up he is told, ‘When you were small, this thing took place.’ This will happen, anyway. I think he will hate his country, and hate his motherland.”
She said she had visited children’s homes in Russia “where children lie in heaps, in huge wards,” and added: “Dear, respected president, dear, respected society, let’s make an exception. Our country is so big, and we always ignore the specific fates of people. Just once, let’s not ignore them.”
Ms. Khamatova, who has a husky voice and an unguarded manner, commands unusual moral authority in Russia, and shocked many in creative circles by agreeing to star in a campaign advertisement for Mr. Putin last year.
Her appeal on Thursday pointed to the passionate social divide over Mr. Putin’s decision to ban American adoptions, a response to American legislation aiming to punish Russian officials accused of corruption. While polling shows that the move met with approval in Russia’s heartland, people in Moscow were far more critical, and tens of thousands joined a protest march in January.
A few dozen children whose adoptive parents had already received a court order have been allowed to leave. Approximately 100 families have petitioned Russia’s government to allow adoptions that were near that stage when Mr. Putin signed the law. At a news conference on Thursday, Lesley Philips, of Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., described a three-year process to retrieve a girl from a facility for children with special needs in Kaliningrad.
“Imagine that you have been pregnant for three years, and then you see your child, but you only spend a week with him, because someone takes her away,” she said. In an interview, she said she had raced to Russia at the end of the year — delayed because Hurricane Sandy held up a document — and was waiting for a court date when Mr. Putin signed the ban.
Ms. Philips is raising Misha, a child adopted from St. Petersburg, and said she wanted him to have a Russian sibling “so that they would have a bond.”
“When we met her, it just felt like our family was complete,” she said.
Among the Russian cultural figures who joined Ms. Khamatova in her appeal were Andrei Makarevich, lead singer of the rock band Time Machine, and the actors Yevgeny Mironov and Sergei Yursky.
Russian Performers Support U.S. Adoptions
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Russian Performers Support U.S. Adoptions
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Russian Performers Support U.S. Adoptions
